yeah, riiiigggghhhht

Seen on a presentation slide yesterday from a vendor:

"we have never experienced system downtime"

HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah. Right.

(I was not able to ask them if this truly is the case or if they have caveats to it. But I know I'll have further opportunities, so I'm looking forward to it....)

Posted by jennj at 12:49 PM | Comments (3)

message in a blog post

It didn’t rain during the show, even though it had poured (and I mean poured) rain just three hours before it started. By the end of the evening we could see the almost-full moon.

Scene: earlier at dinner
Me: “Do you think with 8th row tickets we’ll see someone famous? That would be cool.”
Nbh: “Yeah!”

Scene: five minutes before the police get on stage
Nbh: “Jenn!”
Me: “Yeah?”
Nbh: “I think that’s Sting’s wife in front of us.”
Me: “What?!”

I look up and she turns so I see the side of her face and she looks familiar. Yeah, that could be her. Then she turns around and her all access badge says, “Trudie Sumner”.

Nbh: “It is her, look at the badge!”
Me: “Holy shit. Gimme your iphone!”

I then proceeded to take pictures. Turns out the entire 7th row was her entourage. You’ll find selected iphone pictures of the concert here. Btw, the pictures do not do justice to how close we were to the stage.

The opening act was a band called Fiction Plane and the lead singer is Sting's son. They were pretty good. He sounds just like his father and even looks a bit like him.

Anyway, the show was freakin’ awesome. Fenway Park is a wonderful place to see a concert. Standing on outer field looking back at the stadium seats is pretty cool, even for someone like me who isn’t a baseball fan. I still appreciated it.

Some other tidbits: Sting’s guitar is well worn. There are grooves where his fingers are. Andy Summers can still rock and his guitar strap said “Oh my GOD! They killed Kenny!” with a little picture of Kenny. Stewart Copeland is still amazing and at various points during the show additional percussion instruments came up from the floor behind him and included a huge gong. At one point Stewart dropped his drumstick and faster than you could say “Accio drumstick!” he had a new one without missing a freakin’ beat. Amazing. And we appeared on the jumbotron a few times. Hehe.

Sting looks good for his age. And the tight pants were yummy. By the end of the show his tight, white shirt was a bit soaked. Mmm. Sting in a wet t-shirt.

Very tired and happy am I.

Set list is in the extended entry (courtesty of nbh and his iphone). They picked great songs.

Message in a bottle
Synchronicity II
Walking on the moon
Reggatta de Blanc
When the World is Running Down
Don't Stand So Close To Me
Driven To Tears
Truth Hits Everybody
The bed's too big without you
Every little thing she does
Wrapped around your finger
De doo doo doo, De da da da
Invisible Sun
Walking in your footsteps
I can't stand losing you
Roxanne

Encores:
King of pain
So lonely
Every breath you take

2nd encore:
Next to you
(montage of old tour photos and video)

Posted by jennj at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

blogging from the show

8th row center. Fenway. The police. Show starting in a few. I suspect from these seats we will see the whites of stings eyes. Bragging photos tomorrow. Happy jenn and nbh.

Posted by jennj at 07:11 PM | Comments (0)

top ten EVA's

Pretty cool.

Posted by jennj at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)

question

Corporations have a legal status of a "person". Corporations pay "income tax". If this type of lawsuit and argument continues to win, does this mean corporations can also duck paying "income tax"?

Posted by jennj at 09:22 PM | Comments (3)

because i can't resist posting

I didn't want to go for my run tonight. It's been a hot day. But I needed to do it. And I'm glad I did because two distractions occurred on the run and they were not altogether unpleasant.

Someone had their sprinkler on and it was also watering part of their sidewalk, so of course I ran through it. It felt wonderful.

And then as I was walking (I had stopped running at this point) past the cemetary, I thought I heard bagpipes. Fairly certain that the Journey song playing on my ipod shuffle did not have bagpipes, I took off my headphones and sure enough, someone was playing them somewhere in the cemetary. I finally spotted a guy standing next to his car playing the bagpipes. I guess the neighbors can't complain about the noise, eh? I listened for a bit and then headed home.

Definitely put me in a better mood and I was glad that I went for that run.

Posted by jennj at 09:12 PM | Comments (4)

fracking spambots

I'm getting spam in new entries. It's annoying. I'm going to have to probably re-do some of my spam blocking techniques. Which means I probably won't post until I get around to fixing this. Maybe I'll move over to a different software like Serendipity. I wonder if it has the same spam problems. Or at least easier ways to prevent spam (I have found MT not to be easy to configure to stop the spambots). Cheers.

Posted by jennj at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

behaviorism

Our kitties are attending their yearly physical later this afternoon. We had to keep them separated overnight so we could get a you-know-what sample for each of them.

Well, every morning nbh and Raj have a ritual. Raj sits behind nbh's monitor and stares at the wall waiting to chase reflections made from his cereal spoon (now it's his iPhone screen). Well, Raj didn't get to do that today cause he was separated from everyone. So I'm sitting here working and I look over and there he is, staring at the wall waiting. What do I do? I grab a spoon and play with him for a bit. I'm going to take it as a sign that he's forgotten what we did to him last night.

Posted by jennj at 08:52 AM | Comments (2)

almost missed it

Turns out they finally released the list of Cheney's energy task force from 2001.

"A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress."

Posted by jennj at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

food holidays

You know that book "1,000 places to see before you die"?

I think it would rock to use this list and start a "national food holidays to do before you die" movement.

Whaddya say?

Posted by jennj at 09:31 PM | Comments (5)

best.f*rtune.cookie.ever

Nbh got the following Friday night in his f*rtune cookie:

"Your tongue is your ambassador"

You know what to add to the end of this to make it the best f*rtune cookie ever.

(For those that don't, there's a tradition by many to add the words "in bed" or "between the sheets" to the end of any f*rtune cookie)

Posted by jennj at 08:02 AM | Comments (3)

national healthcare = terrorism

From a post seen on Washington Monthly:

[Yesterday] on Fox News's Your World With Neil Cavuto, National Review Online columnist Jerry Bowyer attacked Michael Moore's movie SiCKO and its positive portrayal of the health care in countries such as Britain and France. He argued that national health care systems are breeding grounds for terrorists because they are "bureaucratic." "I think the terrorists have shown over and over again ... they're very good at gaming the system with bureaucracies," said Bowyer.

Obviously the conclusion to this statement is that we must disband the Dept. of Homeland Security immediately.

Stop. The. Madness. Please.

Posted by jennj at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

an open letter to pixar

Dear Pixar,

Would it kill you to have a main character in one of your movies be female? Don't get me wrong, you have a lot of strong females _in supporting roles_. Your movies have positive messages to children and adults alike. Your films are not just "fun animation". Wouldn't it be great if a main character was a girl and little girls all over the place could identify and/or get inspired by?

The list:

Toy Story: Woody
A Bug's Life: Flik
Toy Story 2: Woody
Monsters, Inc.: Sully
Finding Nemo: Marlin
The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible
Cars: Lightning McQueen
Ratatouille: Remy
WALL-E: Well, near as I can tell with that name the main character is male

Thanks,
CF

Posted by jennj at 10:16 AM | Comments (3)

um, how is this news?

Andrew Speaker,

I don't care that you may have a "less" drug resistant form of TB. If true, that doesn't change anything except your diagnosis. You are still a di*k for your careless behavior.

Thanks,
CF

Posted by jennj at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)

movie thoughts

My thoughts on Live Free or Die Hard, Ratatouille and Transformers are in the extended entry so as not to spoil anything.

Live Free or Die Hard

I love Bruce Willis as John McClane. Not GREAT, but a lot of fun and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Completely over the top with the action scenes (duh). And Justin Long can play comedic sidekick any day. I definitely think if you like this franchise you'll like this movie. The plot is a little iffy, but hey, what do you expect?

Ratatouille
First off, the animated short before the film is worth the price of admission. And then you get this movie on top of it and it's like you should have paid more for your ticket. Cute. Fun. Good story. I just wish the rats spoke with a french accent. Seemed odd. And it made me want to go back to Paris. Nbh and I are discussing where to go for a long weekend when we head to Amsterdam for my business trip (he's going to be able to work remotely) and we've talked about Paris...but I kinda want to go somewhere new (Rome)....who knows...

Transformers
I liked it. It _IS_ a Michael Bay film so I did go in with low expectations. I do not feel like I wasted my money. Basically, the first half is fun. The second half is complete and all out action and they completely abandon any sort of script. So if you have a problem with that, maybe you shouldn't go. But the transformations are freakin' awesome, so ....and it totally will suit any nostalgic needs you may have, that I can guarantee. I would, gulp, go see it again just for the effects.

Posted by jennj at 10:46 AM | Comments (2)

everybody is doing it

This is being posted from nbh's iPhone.

Posted by jennj at 10:02 AM | Comments (2)